NASA’s Earth Sciences Division to celebrate busiest year in more than a decade

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Over the past 12 months NASA has added five missions to its orbiting Earth-observing fleet – the biggest one-year increase in more than a decade. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory was launched from Japan on Feb. 27, 2014. The most recent mission, the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), was launched from California on Jan. 31. (Image Credit: NASA)

LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE >> Friday marks the most active year NASA’s Earth Sciences Division has had in more than a decade thanks to the launching of five orbiters in the past 12 months.

NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) orbiter blasted off from Japan exactly a year ago today. The pioneering international satellite constellation produces revolutionary new data that will answer questions about the life-sustaining water cycle and improve weather forecasting and water resource management.

“What the view from space has given us is an ability to see the entire globe in multiple dimensions and multiple ways,” said Peg Luce, deputy director of the Earth Science Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Headquarters in D.C. “It’s completely transformed our understanding of the Earth, yet we have a high regard for the accuracy of our data, so there’s always an extensive calibration program and that can often include ground-based, ship-based or airborne campaigns or sensors.

“So they work together, but certainly the ground-based can’t possibly give the type of global understanding that you could get from a suite of measurements.”

A group of five NASA panelists participated in a teleconference Thursday to brief about early results derived from the GPM Core Observatory, Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, International Space Station RapidScat, Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, and recently launched Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite.

Three of the five missions are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

Although some of the data is available online for the public, all of the information is free and available to the international scientific community and world-wide decision makers.

“This isthe beginning of a really strong replenishment of the current fleet we have in orbit,” Luce said. “We are anticipating launches of over a dozen new missions in the next eight years or so.”

Including two instruments mounted on the International Space Station, NASA now has 20 operational Earth-observing space missions.

“This has been a phenomenally productive year for NASA in our mission to explore our complex planet from the unique vantage point of space,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in a statement. “Combined with data from our other Earth-observing spacecraft, these new missions give us new insights into how Earth works as a system.”

Last month, NASA released data from a dozen-strong international satellite network and the Core Observatory, providing the agency’s most comprehensive global rain and snowfall analysis since the GPM mission began. Its first visualization of rain and snow was released Thursday.

“Precipitation is one of the phases (of Earth’s cycles) where climate change is going to be noticed by most humans,” said Gail Skofronick-Jackson, GPM project scientist.

As California enters what could be a fourth year of record-breaking drought, satellites such as SMAP, which looks at soil moisture, could help determine how much rainfall is needed before rainwater begins to replenish depleted reservoirs and aquifers.

Launched on Jan. 31, SMAP completed a key milestone Tuesday when it deployed its 20-foot-wide reflector antenna, which, in a month, will begin rotating at 15 revolutions per minute. The satellite will map the entire globe’s soil moisture every two to three days.

Initial data from the SMAP mission will be available in April, Luce said.